Photos: 10 years of bananas, flips and candybars

Like most of my contemporaries, my first mobile phone was a Nokia. A solid hunk of greeny black plastic, quiffed with an unapologetic aerial. The screen had an orange backlight - as did the translucent rubber buttons - and a reassuringly basic monochrome display. All told, it was something of a brick, certainly by today's slimline standards but it saw me through my uni years before inexplicably malfunctioning and being replaced, ignominiously, with a plasticy Philips which I exhausted within a year after being wooed by the promise of an FM radio.

The next decade or so would not only establish a mass market for mobiles across the developed world, with phones finding their way into pretty much everyone's pocket, but also bear witness to various evolutions of form and function - as fashion dictated, or manufacturer-cunning created.

What began life as a device for phoning people on the move is today an internet browser, a blogging tool, a media player, a video camera, a navigation device, an emailer - and plenty more besides. (We can only guess what another decade of mass market mobile will bring - though the smart money's on lashings of location-based services.)

Looking back over the last 10-plus years of mobile evolution, which handsets stand out as iconic, as something special in their day - perhaps breaking new ground or capturing the imagination of the masses, albeit for a while.

Here is silicon.com's round-up of the mobiles - chunky and svelte - that have mattered since 1996…

Photo credit: Chris Beaumont/CNET Networks

Which mobile hardware do you rate from the past decade? Let us know by posting a Reader Comment below...